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You search the house and find no one inside, not Billie, her brothers, bandits, or zombies. A line of blood leads from the refrigerator to the open back door, and more bullet holes dot the kitchen walls. The cellar door is smashed, and you find the body of a middle-aged man with a stick impaled through his left eye. He wears overalls and work boots but has nothing to identify him, though you know he's not a Taylor.

The house has been ransacked, and few items of value have been left behind. Most of the kitchen cupboards are empty except for a few packages of snack cupcakes and a few sticks of dried meat. You leave the latter for someone else. Under a bed in one of the Taylor son's bedrooms, you find a quarter-pack of cigarettes, two candy bars, and two bottles of beer. Tucked behind his toilet bowl is a spare roll of toilet paper. You also find two tins of gunpowder. Though the shed connected to the back of the house has been picked clean, you take some wood, mechanical, and metal scraps. In the dirt next to the shed is a library book on plant life of the Colorado valley. You take it with you. Having finished your search, you head to the front of the house.

Having finished your search, you start your journey home. As you walk away from the Taylor farm, you can't help but wonder what happened to Billie and her brothers. You can only hope that Billie and her brothers managed to survive whatever happened at their house. It's hard to maintain faith in the apocalypse. From now on, you should set low expectations for ever seeing the people you used to know.